The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890

by Richard Slotkin

Overview

A two-time National Book Award finalist’s “ambitious and provocative” look at Custer’s Last Stand, capitalism, and the rise of the cowboys-and-Indians legend (The New York Review of Books).

In The Fatal Environment, historian Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of Native Americans helped justify the course of America’s rise to wealth and power. Using Custer’s Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans feared might happen if the frontier should be closed and the “savage” element be permitted to dominate the “civilized,” Slotkin shows the emergence by 1890 of a mythos redefined to help Americans respond to the confusion and strife of industrialization and imperial expansion.

“A clearly written, challenging and provocative work that should prove enormously valuable to serious students of American history.” —The New York Times

“[An] arresting hypothesis.” —Henry Nash Smith, American Historical Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504090360
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Series:	Mythology of the American West
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	632
Sales rank:	146,535
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Richard Slotkin, widely regarded as one of America’s leading cultural critics, is a two-time finalist for the National Book Award. In addition to his prize-winning trilogy on the myth of the frontier in America, Slotkin is the author of Lost Battalions, a New York Times Notable Book, and A Great Disorder, as well as three historical novels, including The Return of Henry Starr​. He is the Olin Professor of English and American Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University.
Richard Slotkin, widely regarded as one of America’s leading cultural critics, is a two-time finalist for the National Book Award. In addition to his prize-winning trilogy on the myth of the frontier in America, Slotkin is the author of Lost Battalions, a New York Times Notable Book, and A Great Disorder, as well as three historical novels, including The Return of Henry Starr​. He is the Olin Professor of English and American Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University.

Editorial Reviews

<:st> Reprint of the Athenaeum original of 1985 (which is cited in ). Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

"Without question, this is the most ambitious and provocative work in the field of American Studies to appear in recent years." –George M. Fredrickson, New York Review of Books

From the Publisher